Traveling to Heal

I went to Surabaya to attended some really tense business meetings. I was supposed to go, spend 3 days there and come back to Brazil. But definitely I was not traveling 35 hours just to know a boring hotel room and some gray industrial installations which looked exactly the same as the one I worked at… So I anticipated my vacation and headed to Bali. Anyway, I DID travel 35 hours to get to Indonesia and, after all the travelling (plus the jet lag and the 72 hours of crazy working) I arrived in Bali in a very pitiful shape. In an attempt to put my pieces together, I spent my first 2 days relaxing: I got some pacific errands, went to some local temples (at Monkey Forest I felt like Mowgli amongst the Bandar-Log!), eat good food, had a massage… And, even so, after 2 days in paradise, I was not completely fine yet. And it was somehow evident: one night, I sat at the terrace of the homestay I stayed and my host suddenly said: “You NEED to go to Pura Tirta Empul. I’ll drive you there”. I knew nothing about the temple, but I was attracted by the main pool as soon as I crossed the first wonderful split gate. It was packed with Indonesian and tourists. The weather was a little cold (as much as it can be). I was alone and had nobody to watch my belongs, including my expensive semi-professional camera. And I had no clothes to change. But I knew I should bath. And then I heard somebody saying you should wash yourself and pray under each one of the 12 fountains to be… healed. And healing was a good definition of what I need then – even before my travel to Indonesia. So I dive in the waters and let it wash the bad stuff from me. At the end of the day, I was feeling so good that it was almost impossible to not believe the waters are really curative. But Tirta Empul had a surprise to me! I was so hypnotized by the waters that I had not taken any picture from the temple before bathing. So I take my camera and… I was chocked to discover its photometer – broken for more than one year, then – was also working again. Like myself. This story is what makes Tirta Empul a travel treasure to me: it is about the mark it left in me. I always though I would be spotting a potential history when I looked though the lenses of my camera. But know, when I see the photometer working, it is like I’m looking also to all the histories which I already lived and told. And it gives me fuel to travel again and live to produce more stories.